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Playboy Retro: March Playmate Review

By Playboy.com StaffMarch 2, 2013

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<p>Playboy hasn't missed a month since March 1955 and we've got 58 years worth of Playmates to prove it. </p>

Only once since Playboy was first published in December of 1953 has there not been
a Playmate of the Month: March 1955. It was indeed a sad month for our male
readers. But every month since then we’ve sought out and featured the world’s
most beautiful women baring it all in our pages, and we’re pretty proud of
that.

To celebrate this streak (696 months and
counting), #PlayboyRetro brings you The Playmate Review, a look back through
the decades at the Playmates that previously held the title, in this case, of
Miss March. Along the way, we’ll try to contextualize the time and the state
the country was in when they appeared. We begin today with the beautiful…

Sandra Edwards – March 1957

{“pbembedwidget”:“gallery”,“id”:“6067”,“size”:“small”,“alignment”:“right”}What do Jimmy Hoffa, Dr. Seuss and Elvis
Presley have in common? March 1957: Cat
in the Hat is published, Hoffa is arrested by the FBI on bribery charges
(while his Teamsters Union predecessor pleads the fifth 140 times while being
questioned) and Elvis Presley buys Graceland, his family home, for 100,000
American dollars. Playboy is a mere three
years old but has already become something of a household name.

Priscilla Wright – March 1966

{“pbembedwidget”:“gallery”,“id”:“4569”,“size”:“small”,“alignment”:“right”}With protests raging against the war in
Vietnam, the Space Race heating up (sort of: the Soviet Union crashed Venera 3
on Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to “land” on another planet) and John Lennon blaspheming the Beatles all the way to bank, the rare beauty of
Priscilla Wright breaks up all the tension, at least for a little while.

Christina Smith – March 1978

{“pbembedwidget”:“gallery”,“id”:“8635”,“size”:“small”,“alignment”:“right”}March 1978 is a weird one: Sandwiched
between Ted Bundy’s arrest, the Hillside Strangler’s tenth and final victim
(serial killers and the ’70s, right?) and Larry Flynt being shot and paralyzed
in Georgia, Christina Smith makes her Playboy
debut. By this time Playboy has
become a cornerstone of short fiction on the back of Robie Macauley, publishing
such notable names as John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov, Arthur Koestler and Kurt
Vonnegut Jr.

Dona Speir – March 1984

{“pbembedwidget”:“gallery”,“id”:“2340”,“size”:“small”,“alignment”:“right”}Despite the year not quite mirroring the
infamous Orwell novel of the same name, the world is a bit of a crazy place in
1984: Sein Fein and the UVF are ripping Ireland apart, Iran
and Iraq are doing the same in the Middle East, and in America, the McMartin
Preschool trial has come about, a case accusing everyone from the McMartin
Family to (literally) Chuck Norris of satanic sexual child abuse. In a less bizarre world, the incredibly attractive
Sara Jean Underwood is born and Dona Speir appears in our pages, then
in a series of ridiculously awesome “action” films aimed obviously at men.

Neriah Davis - March 1994

{“pbembedwidget”:“gallery”,“id”:“675”,“size”:“small”,“alignment”:“right”}While
Tonya Harding is taking the world of professional ice skating to new lows (she
plead guilty to orchestrating an attack on competitor Nancy Kerrigan to improve
her own chances) and Apple is taking technology to new heights (the first
Macintosh is released with PowerPC processors, virtually changing the world of
home computing), Steven Speilberg is cleaning up at the Oscars for Schindler’s
list and the Supreme Court is deciding we can do things like this under fair
use. Meanwhile, Neriah Davis is “turning heads on the shaded terrace of a
Sunset Boulevard restaurant.”